Scaling Your SaaS: Manage Multiple Programs to Grow Faster

Ever seen a new type of partner fill out your application form…and then another and another still?

You don’t want to turn them away because there they could get your brand in front of a whole new audience, increase your average value order (AOV), and boost your average lifetime value LTV. But folding them into your existing program would be like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. 

The incentives wouldn’t really hit the right notes. The onboarding process would need to be much more hands-on. And the rules of engagement would need some significant changes.

What you need is a whole new program, built just for them. 

But is managing multiple programs even possible? The short answer is absolutely— and there are ways to make it easier on yourself, your team and your partners.

Below, we share what you need to know to prepare for a second (or third) program launch and perfect your multi-program strategy with the help of Alex Zacharenkov, Head of Partnerships at Brevo — who’s got four partner programs running (and counting).

Related: Why B2B SaaS companies should run multiple partner programs.

Best practices for multi-program management at every stage

Before you launch a new partner program

Get buy-in

Starting a new program is no small feat. You’ll need to design the onboarding process, consider partner incentives, develop a recruiting strategy and create the content your partners need to succeed.

All that requires time, money and effort. Without buy-in, you’re stuck trying to do it all with only your current resources at your disposal — while possibly (likely) shouldering skepticism from your leadership team.

“To get people to believe in your new program, you need to connect it directly to one or two strategic objectives that are essential to the business,” Zacharenkov shares.

“For example, Brevo aimed to scale as quickly as possible. So I framed each of our programs as a way to get an easy 'in' with companies at each level of our target market: startups, mid-market and enterprise.”

Back up your claims with evidence to give leadership some extra confidence and context. For instance, you could add:

• Stats from research reports that support the industry moving in a direction that these new kinds of partners can support.
• How many potential partners have walked in the door this past quarter looking for ways to work together.
• Proof from competitors or companies of a similar size in a different vertical have launched similar types of programs recently.

Zacharenkov also suggests positioning your new program as an experiment. “That way, leaders don’t feel like you’re wasting a huge chunk of your budget on one idea.”

See more: How a partnerships leader gets on ELT radar (and wins buy-in).

Determine resources

At Brevo, Zacharenkov and his peers put together what they call “dream teams” for each partner program. “We have one lead and one expert in the field who work their partnerships day in and day out. Then, we ask for supplementary support from sales, marketing and customer success.”

That resource planning model may or may not work for you, depending on the size and stage of your company and the type of program you’re running. 

“I find that agency programs tend to require more support from sales, because there’s more hands-on, human interaction. Affiliates, on the other hand, will need more marketing support,” Zacharenkov advises.

To help you figure out what people and cross-functional support you need to operate at the level you’re aiming for, pull together a loose plan for:

• ‍Rolling out the program
  
  • How many partners are you starting with?
  • Do you already have strong relationships with them or not?
  • How will working on the rollout impact other projects running in parallel?‍
• ‍Iterating on what’s there
  
  • What kinds of changes might you anticipate?
  • How do you plan to balance those updates with other day-to-day work?‍
• ‍Scaling up your program
  
  • What software are you using to track progress?
  • Do you think you might add other features like training and certification or MDFs?
  • What other teams might you need assistance from?

Related: Fostering better cross-team collaboration between sales and partnerships.

Customize your onboarding plans

More often than not, a new partner program will require a new onboarding process. That’s because each type of partner needs a different kind of knowledge and GTM strategy.

“Take affiliates, for instance. Their job is to expose Brevo to audiences that may not yet be aware of us and to convince those prospects to convert. They need help positioning Brevo in the best light. They don’t need to go through an intense product training.” Zacharenkov notes.

“Agencies, by contrast, do need to know our product inside and out. They need to know our unique selling points and benefits and adapt them to their customers’ needs.”

A good way to go about this is to write out your ideal partner journey. Ask yourself questions like:

• How and when do they get connected to a partner manager?
• How will you set goals with them? Where can they access business plans and see their progress?
• Where do they find marketing materials? Are they supposed to use those marketing materials a certain way?
• How many people need to be certified at each partner? How will you incentivize trainings?

Then, convert that into a step-by-step onboarding process. For more hints — and real-life examples — read about what great partner onboarding looks like .

When you implement a new partner program

Start with a dry run

Your project plans for your new partner program may look great on paper. But realistically, they’ll need a few tweaks when put into practice. And it’s better for those adjustments to happen before a public launch.

“We think of our new program as a product MVP,” Zacharenkov emphasizes. “Just like product teams want all their ducks in a row ahead of a full release, we also want to know that our ‘product’ is  valuable to partners and end customers and  intuitive to use.”

For each new program, Zacharenkov and his team pressure test their current tech ecosystem, onboarding workflows and incentives with several trusted partners, reporting bugs and enhancement requests along the way.

“Usually, our trials run for about a month or two, because it takes a while to compile the results and make changes. After we feel good about how the program looks and feels and our trial partners feel the same, we’ll introduce it to a couple more segments of partners in the same group.”

A more gradual rollout helps him and his teams identify and resolve issues quicker than a big-bang-style approach.

You might also like: How to build an affiliate program for a high ACV product.

Revisit your incentives

Something you may realize in your dry run or in the early days of your program is that your incentives are missing the mark. Partners might tell you this outright (and you’re lucky if you get that candid constructive criticism!) or you may notice that they aren’t registering as many deals or leads as you’d hoped.

“You hear this over and over, but it’s really true: different kinds of partners expect different kinds of compensation,” Zacharenkov reiterates.

In his experience, agencies tend to respond better to rev share. They also expect more enablement and support from you, perhaps with dedicated onboarding sessions. They would also appreciate co-marketing opportunities, like joint content, case studies or podcast appearances.

“You might also try out a tiering system for extra incentives. If they send over a certain number of leads per quarter or month, for example, you might consider providing them with MDFs or an extra sandbox. Try it with 10 to 20 partners first to see if it generates more activity.”

At Brevo, Zacharenkov’s team starts sending business back to partners after they’ve submitted a certain number of referrals. They’re either leads that Brevo’s sales team didn’t have bandwidth for or had trouble closing previously.

Affiliates and B2B influencers, on the other hand, tend to do better on a performance-based commission. “For them, we aim to make their work as easy as possible, providing them with all the marketing materials they need. SPIFFs often work well,” says Zacharenkov.

Centralize your data in a PRM

When you’re launching a new partner program on top of all of your existing programs, things can start to get confusing.Where did this lead come from? Which partner can I attribute a boost in traffic to? Who needs payouts this month?

Trying to keep track of all this in separate spreadsheets adds unnecessary time to your workday and can lead to mistakes that alienate your partners (and potentially tank your program).Data can be messy. To keep everything streamlined, Zacharenkov recommends treating your PRM as a kind of project management tool.

“I’ve intentionally built out our PartnerStack instance in a way that makes tracking each partner program easy. Each program has its own group, and partners automatically get assigned to that group based on the information they provide in their application form.”

From there, Zacharenkov built various performance reporting dashboards specifically for those groups, allowing him and his team to monitor activity on the backend. He also customized partner portals for each group, so that when each partner logs in, they only see the resources and announcements that apply specifically to them.

“With a visual representation of the impact across programs, I can easily see what segments yield the most uplift in deal regs, referrals and conversions. If one program isn’t performing well, I can immediately dial in to see what might be causing the issue. This really helps prioritize our tasks and make sure our projects are always aligned with company goals.”

See more: The pros of multiple partnership programs (and the cons of having only one).

When you’re ready to scale

See where you can consolidate

If you have a project management mindset, you probably used one of your existing programs as a template, copying and modifying partner program rules, requirements, reports and content accordingly.

But there may be other opportunities to avoid reinventing the wheel. For example, you could reuse existing content and resources.

• New release materials: Say your company is deploying some new features and you need to get the word out to your partners. Each partner program may need a slightly different version of your product marketing materials, but there probably doesn’t need to be too much variation. Request stock copy, slides, or interactive demos and make tweaks for each one, rather than logging multiple marketing tickets.
• Training courses: Again, these may require some modifications, but overall, the content about your product should be relatively consistent across your programs. So, if you determine that another program needs some more training, start with the courses you already have and build from there. If you’re stuck, see if your customer success team has any standard help documentation and update it to fit your partners’ needs.
• Battlecards and one pagers: If one of your partner programs is already using specific content that’s producing great results, try sharing it with another one to see if it can work just as well — those partners may have good ideas for improving or updating this content, too, which can help all of your partners excel.

Lean into automation

The less time you spend on manual work, the more time you have to spend with partners. Carve out time each month to find ways of reducing unnecessary work.

“The aim is to make your programs as scalable and efficient as possible. That way, you can rinse and repeat (with some fine-tuning) and replicate the traction you have with your initial programs for any new one you introduce.”

Here are some partner program automation ideas to get your gears turning:

• Automatically send welcome email sequences (customized to each partner group) with information about your portal, the program they joined, the most popular documentation, training, and key next steps to take the load off of partner managers.
• Set up partner notifications so that they know to submit receipts for MDFs, when certain incentives or certifications are expiring and when they’re getting paid, so you’re not sending one-off emails.
• Route deal approvals to the appropriate partner manager based on deal size, product, or region.
• Schedule reports to send to your teammates via email on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis to detect (and address) any anomalies early.
• Sync leads with your CRM to ensure partner-sourced revenue is properly attributed and followed up on by reps, if need be. You can even create workflows using a tool like Zapier to notify sales or CS about deals that require their input.

Future-proof your business with solid multi-program management

Running multiple partner programs can be a challenge. Yet when there’s clear demand for a new program, turning your back on it means leaving a lot on the table. By becoming a multi-program vendor, you:

• Gain access to new geos or verticals
• Amplify your brand
• Diversify your revenue streams
• Use partner input to avoid mistakes, add new features to your product and explore possible acquisitions

And once you get the hang of multi-program management, Zacharenkov shares, “The only limiting factor becomes how many partners you can feed into each of your programs.”

Want to get a jumpstart? See how PartnerStack can help you keep all of your partner channels humming along — book a demo today.